The CAN (“Controller Area Network” in the literature) communication protocol, as defined by the ISO 11898 standards, incorporated by reference herein is widely used in modern motor vehicles.
An electronic computer on board a motor vehicle, compatible with the CAN communication protocol, generally includes a CAN communication controller (defined by the standard ISO 11898-1) incorporated by reference herein linked to a CAN bus driver (defined by the standard ISO 11898-2/3) incorporated by reference herein that primarily forms the physical interface between the CAN communication controller and a communication bus. Such a bus driver is generally referred to as a “transceiver” in the literature.
It is nowadays being contemplated to integrate a new communication protocol into motor vehicles, namely the CAN-FD (“CAN with Flexible Data rate” in the literature) communication protocol. The CAN-FD communication protocol (defined by the standard ISO 11898-7) incorporated by reference herein is an improvement of the CAN communication protocol. In comparison with said CAN communication protocol, the CAN-FD communication protocol increases the efficiency of communication on the communication bus by increasing the bit rate and by increasing the size of the frame that is used.
In order to use the CAN-FD communication protocol, new electronic computer architectures are currently being developed that are based in particular on the use of more powerful microcontrollers.
However, the use of a new type of microcontroller generally brings about significant software developments, meaning that such a solution is not able to be contemplated either in the very short term, for quick integration of the CAN-FD communication protocol into motor vehicles, or at a small extra cost in comparison with the current solutions.